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Illegal Logging Deals Rife in Liberia, Group Reports

Global WitnessJust one company, Atlantic Resources, has logging permits for 7.5 percent of Liberia’s land (sites shaded in orange), a group reports.

For years, the environmental group Global Witness has been investigating the destruction of forests in the developing world. Much of the wood illegally harvested there ends up in the hands of international companies that manufacture furniture, paper and biofuels. Global Witness has campaigned against illegal harvesting of ebony and rosewood in Madagascar, exposed illegal exports of timber from Myanmar to China and documented the killings of antilogging activists in Cambodia.

In a new report that seems to be having some immediate repercussions, the group has now turned its sights on illegal logging in Liberia.

The report says that control of one-quarter of Liberia’s land has been granted to logging companies in just two years through permits that were illegally or fraudulently awarded. Essentially, “private use permits” intended to allow private landowners to cut down trees on their property are being signed over to logging companies, creating a loophole for felling vast tracts of forest.

One company now controls 7.5 percent of Liberia’s land, the group said. It added that some of the private-use permits had been fraudulently transferred and that local people often did not understand the deals.

Within hours of the report’s release, Liberia’s president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, suspended the head of the country’s Forestry Development Authority and ordered an investigation.

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